Electronic devices, such as mobile phones and personal digital assistants (PDA's), often contain firmware and application software that are either provided by the manufacturers of the electronic devices, by telecommunication carriers, or by third parties. If firmware or firmware components are to be changed in electronic devices, it is often very tricky to update the firmware components. Device management of electronic devices (such as mobile handsets) in an operator's network provides the means by which problems with a mobile handset can be diagnosed and fixed using firmware updates. However, if a mobile phone is not in the home network, conducting device management will often incur extra charges, due to the inclusion of roaming charges. A subscriber is not likely to be happy if the addition of roaming charges is likely to make device management expensive, if not prohibitive.
It is often difficult to determine what is wrong with a device when a problem is encountered. This conducting device management to determine what is wrong with the device, especially when the device is “roaming”, i.e. incurring roaming charges, is likely to make the subscriber, or an operator, unhappy. Conducting any device management is likely to be expensive when a user is roaming, especially if they involve downloading large files or transferring a lot of information, etc.
Server side solutions in an operator's network generally do not support anything to do with roaming. Similarly, the OMA DM based devices generally do not provide any indication that they are roaming, either to a user or to the DM server. Thus, there is no “roaming sensitivity” in device management solutions, in general.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.